The field of the invention generally relates to refrigerators, and more particularly relates to door mounting apparatus for refrigerators.
As is well known, refrigerator doors are typically mounted using hinges that include brackets that are connected to the face of the cabinet and extend forwardly from the side to which the door opens. These brackets normally have a horizontal plate with an aperture that captures a pin extending vertically from the door. It is desirable that the pivot point of the door be relatively far forward from the face of the cabinet to keep the door swing within the lateral profile of the cabinet. More specifically, it is desirable to be able to position a refrigerator flush against a room wall and open the door towards the wall. For this purpose, it is necessary that the edge of the door not rotate out beyond the side of the cabinet as the door opens.
A current trend is to make refrigerator doors larger to increase their capacity so that more food products such as beverages can be readily accessed therefrom. The combination of heavy doors with pivot points relatively far in front of the cabinet face has led to relatively large forces on the hinges and the hinge mounting surfaces. Further, with a large capacity door, there may be a tendency for a refrigerator to tip forward when a fully loaded door is opened. Also, refrigerators are typically supported on rollers, and the force exerted on a refrigerator when opening the door may cause the refrigerator to move or pull forward.